BOY, WAS I WRONG

As a young child, I will always remember what I thought and truly believed was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Being raised Catholic and attending Catholic school, I believed in my young innocence that the world was different; that everyone got along together. That people were kind, helpful, honest, and would never hurt anyone.

As I was taught, I believed that if I didn't go to church on Sunday, I was committing a mortal sin (a felony) if I ate meat on Friday, it was a venial sin (a misdemeanor). My fate would be heaven, purgatory, or hell depending on what sins I committed in my life when I died, without going to confession. I also believed that a priest was the only one who could get your sins forgiven in confession. I believed that all priests were holy and could never do wrong or would ever want to. As an adult, I have cut out the middleman and have a direct line to God for forgiveness.

Reading the news, in the past few years, what some priests have done to children shattered my belief of what I believed them to be. Making innocent children victims for their own pleasure is so sick and unthinkable. They should be in prison. I will never trust anyone just because they are religious people until I have a good reason to trust them.

I also believed that all police officers were always helpful and always right and would protect us, no matter what, like superheroes, that always would come to the rescue. That belief went out of the window with current and past events. I do believe we need the police without the police; it would be chaos, and most officers are excellent and dedicated to protect and serve the citizens of our cities. But a few bad ones make the good ones look bad to everyone, which I believe is so unfair to all the dedicated officers that are good. I believe now that police officers that do intentional harm to people and are convicted should pay for their crime in prison, be removed and banned from being police officers, and any security positions for life. Please get rid of all the bad apples for everyone's sake.

Another thing I was wrong about was politicians. I believed all politicians, especially the President, were honest, never lied, never accepted money for favors, never talked wrong about others, and always put the people first. I never thought there was any corruption with world leaders either. I think I was wrong about most of those things. I also thought your political party choice was just that, not being threatened for being one or the other. I never thought we would come down to be this type of situation about individual beliefs and the freedom to choose. Are we living in a civilized world, sometimes I wonder?

I also thought that schools were a place for learning, not a place that would need police officers to protect students from harming other students. Now schools are war zones mass shootings lock downs, insane kids with guns shooting many students and killing them for no reason. Maybe it’s the music they listen too or the video games they play. It seems like every school needs a police force to guard the children with metal detectors, pat downs, and searches to look for weapons this is unacceptable for a school but sadly it must be done for all the children’s safety.

These are just a few of my opinions; my beliefs as a child are no longer valid. I am sure you had childhood beliefs that aren't true today, but it’s really sad that the world is changing for the worse.